broadaxe and the whipsaw--hung overhead in massive beams. From these
low, blackened timbers there swung many antique lamps, splendid enough
for a palace and strangely out of place in a log house of the
wilderness. On the rough walls there were also large sconces of
burnished silver but poorly filled with tallow candles. In the bare
spaces between these silver sconces were the heads of wild animals
mingled with many rifles, both old and new, and other arms of the
hunter. Over the tall mantelpiece there were crossed two untarnished
swords which had been worn by the judge's father in the Revolution. On
the red cedar of the floor, polished by wear and rubbing, there lay the
skins of wild beasts, together with costly foreign rugs. The same
strange mixture of rudeness and refinement was to be seen everywhere
throughout the room. The table standing in the centre of the floor,
ready for the evening meal, was made of unplaned boards, rudely put
together by the unskilled hands of the backwoods. Yet it was set with
the finest china, the rarest glass, and the richest silver that the
greatest skill of the old world could supply. The chairs placed around
the table were made of unpainted wood from the forest, with seats woven
out of the coarse rushes from the river. And there, between the front
windows, stood Ruth's piano, the first in that part of the wilderness,
and as fine as the finest of its day anywhere.

It is true that something like the same confusion of luxury and wildness
was becoming more or less common throughout the country. The wain trains
which had lately followed the packhorse trains over the
Alleghanies--with the widening of the Wilderness Road--were already
bringing many comforts and even luxuries to the cabins of the well-to-do
settlers. But nothing like those which were fetched constantly to Cedar
House ever came to any other household; and it was not the family who
caused them to be brought there. For while the judge was a man of wealth